Unless otherwise indicated herein, the approaches described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Carbon dioxide (“CO2”) is a greenhouse gas, which is believed to contribute to climate change. There are programs being proposed on international, national, regional, and/or local level that attempt to reduce or mitigate an ever-increasing amount of CO2 being released into the earth's atmosphere from the use of non-renewable energy resources, such as fossil fuels. At some point, it is foreseeable that taxes or fees may be imposed on an individual or on a household level, wherein such taxes or fees may be reduced with a quantifiable demonstration of the use of renewal energy resources on a personal or household level, such as using personal/household solar, wind, or mechanical (manually cranked generators) energy sources.
Portable electronic devices, such as cell phones, digital music players, media players, personal data assistants, wireless web devices, headset devices, application specific devices, and the like, use considerable energy. For example, the number of mobile phone users is now in excess of 3 billion. Assuming the average power consumption of mobile phones is 2 W, more than 250 MW is consumed every hour in the world. Accordingly, this equates to approximately 120 tons of CO2 (depending on the calculation method utilized) being emitted per hour into the earth's atmosphere if all of the energy used by these mobile phones is generated through the burning of fossil fuels. Thus, the use of renewable resources in the use and/or charging of these devices would help reduce the emission of CO2 into the earth's atmosphere.